Read vs Listen: Someone Else's Shoes
A woman walks off with the wrong gym bag, and Jojo Moyes builds a whole novel out of what happens when she tries on the shoes inside it. The reason to listen has nothing to do with the plot and everything to do with the two women reading it to you.
Listen on Audible
Daisy Ridley's narration does real, specific work keeping Sam and Nisha distinct that a silent read leaves you to do yourself.
Confidence 76%, which puts it in the leaning band. Bands run from close call at 50 to 64, through leaning at 65 to 79 and clear at 80 to 94, up to clear cut at 95 and above.
Someone Else's Shoes
Jojo Moyes
- Genre
- Contemporary / women's fiction
- Published
- 2023
- Length
- 432 pages (UK hardback; US paperback lists 464)
- On audio
- 12 hrs 22 min
- On screen
- None confirmed
On this page
Why we reached this verdict
Every book on this site is checked against the same ten questions. They are based on research into what most people find easier to follow in each format, not on whether the book is any good.
Nothing on the read side of the ledger fires for this book. It is not structurally complex, timeline-jumping or dense with unfamiliar names, so there is no strong pull towards the page. What tips it to listen is how often reviewers volunteer, unprompted, that Daisy Ridley's narration is doing something specific: keeping Sam and Nisha, two women with very different lives, audibly distinct across a long book. The one thing holding this back from a clearer verdict is that it is still a single narrator carrying two alternating perspectives, the recurring soft spot across every dual-POV title in this set.
The recording at a glance
- Narrated by
- Daisy Ridley
- Length
- 12 hrs 22 min (Penguin Audio, 2023)
- Production
- Single narrator voicing both Sam's and Nisha's chapters
- Recognition
- None confirmed
- What you miss
- Nothing significant identified; if the printed chapter headings name the POV character, that visual cue is not something the audio reproduces, you infer the speaker from voice and content instead
What this book actually is
Someone Else's Shoes turns on a mix-up at the gym. Sam Kemp, worn down by a struggling marriage and a job she is about to lose, accidentally picks up a bag belonging to Nisha Cantor, a wealthy woman whose husband has just frozen her out of their life without warning. Inside the bag is a pair of designer shoes, and putting them on becomes the small, specific act that starts to change how Sam moves through her own crisis. The novel alternates between the two women's perspectives as their circumstances, on paper opposite ends of a very comfortable-to-precarious spectrum, turn out to have more in common than either expects.
It is a contemporary, London-set novel, published in 2023, and it stays in a fairly conventional linear timeline throughout. The pleasure of it is character-driven rather than plot-driven: side characters that reviewers describe as fully formed and charmingly funny, workplace and marital politics played for both comedy and real sting, and two women's voices that are meant to sound different because their lives are so different.
The case for reading it
There is not a strong structural case for it. The story runs in a straight line, there are only two points of view to hold rather than a sprawling cast, and the prose is accessible and dialogue-heavy rather than the kind of writing that rewards lingering on a sentence. None of the usual reasons to put a book on Kindle, jumping timelines, a crowd of names, deliberate use of layout, apply here. If there is a personal reason to read it instead, it is pacing: some readers found the middle section slow, and a physical or e-book copy makes it easier to skim ahead through a lull than an audiobook does.
The case for listening to it
The case for audio is not really about the book's plot mechanics, it is about the performance. Reviewers keep returning, without being asked, to how good Daisy Ridley is at making Sam and Nisha sound like two distinct people rather than one narrator doing two accents on top of the same voice. One Goodreads reviewer called her "one of my favorite narrators" and said flatly "she killed it," and others specifically steer people towards the audio version over the page. That is the kind of praise that tends to be about craft rather than novelty, and it means the recording is adding something a silent read cannot: a felt difference between two women's inner voices that the listener does not have to construct alone.
The audiobook in detail
Penguin Audio released the recording alongside the print edition in February 2023, running 12 hours 22 minutes, with Daisy Ridley as the sole narrator across both Sam's and Nisha's chapters. One listener independently clocked roughly 12.5 hours at 1.4x speed, which lines up closely with the official runtime. At a more typical 1.5x listening speed, that comes down to around 8 hours 15 minutes, a manageable few sittings for a book of this length. There is no full cast and no dramatisation here, this is a single-performer audiobook, and its strength rests entirely on how well that one performer differentiates her two leads, which by all available reader feedback, she does convincingly.
Who should ignore this verdict
Anyone who finds a single narrator voicing two alternating protagonists genuinely hard to track, regardless of how well it is performed, should read this one instead. The same goes for anyone who wants to skim through a slower stretch of story at their own pace rather than sit through it in real time, which is easier to do on the page. For most readers though, the thing that makes this book distinctive, Sam and Nisha's contrasting lives, is exactly the thing the audiobook performs best.
Related verdicts
Lessons in Chemistry
Another determined female lead written for the book-club audience, and another that lands on listen.
Same shelfThe Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
A different dual-timeframe emotional drama with a single narrator doing standout work of her own.
Opposite verdictFourth Wing
Fast, action-driven fantasy at the opposite end from this slower, dialogue-led contemporary novel.
Start hereHow we decide
The ten questions behind every verdict on this site.
Questions people ask
Is the Someone Else's Shoes audiobook worth listening to?
Yes. Reviewers repeatedly single out narrator Daisy Ridley for how clearly she distinguishes Sam and Nisha, the book's two leads, which is a real point in the audiobook's favour rather than a generic recommendation.
Is Someone Else's Shoes told from more than one point of view?
Yes, it alternates between two protagonists, Sam Kemp and Nisha Cantor, whose separate crises eventually converge. That is a mild complication for audio, though not enough to outweigh the narration.
Is Someone Else's Shoes a slow read?
Some readers describe the middle section as slow, and the book runs to 432 pages in UK hardback, 12 hours 22 minutes on audio. It is a character-driven, dialogue-heavy novel rather than a fast plot machine.
Is there a film or TV adaptation of Someone Else's Shoes?
None has been confirmed.
How this verdict was reached
Every book on this site is checked against the same ten questions, set in advance and applied identically to every title. They are based on research into what readers and listeners generally find easier to follow in each format, not on personal preference, and they are published in full so you can check the reasoning yourself. Verdicts are never paid for, sponsored or influenced by affiliate partners.
- The criteria: read the ten questions in full.
- What we checked for this book: narrator identity and reader reaction to the performance; the number of points of view and how they're structured; timeline and setting complexity; page length against confirmed audio runtime.
- Verdict last reviewed: 5 August 2026. Editions and narrators change, so verdicts are rechecked annually.
- Prefer different criteria? The app lets you change which of the ten questions matter to you.
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